Hooray for HBA

Self's healthy beauty award winners for 2011.

Nancy Jeffries, Contributing Editor04.27.11

Health and beauty are the watchwords for today’s cosmetics industry, according to Lucy Danziger, editor-in-chief of Self magazine. The growth of the magazine’s Healthy Beauty Award program, now in its 12th year, is a testament, said Danziger, to the consumer’s desire for brands and products that enable women to pursue and achieve both of these values. The Self Healthy Beauty Awards 2011 held last week at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design, support a strong preference among today’s consumers for products that not only make women more beautiful, but offer healthy ingredient options and high functionality.

Self's Editor-in-Chief, Lucy Danziger

More beauty categories, more new technology, and more interactivity thanks to Facebook and Twitter, are enabling women to communicate via technology-abetted word-of-mouth. According to a Self survey of the magazine’s readers, 62% of women rely on word-of-mouth for beauty advice, and new technology is supporting this flow of information on a significant scale. Other stats uncovered in the Healthy Beauty Award selection process, gleaned from testing a year’s worth of new beauty products, 1,187 in all, revealed a number of interesting trends. Popular ingredients included shea butter, cocoa butter, lavender, and sugar; eyes were a hot topic, with 166 new products for eyes assessed in the process, and interesting crossovers, including Cindy Crawford’s Meaningful Beauty face products, Kat Von D’s makeup, and Beyonce’s sparkly body lotion, a beauty award winner, took center stage.

Standout Trends Tout Function and Nature

Among the trends found in the hair category were the following, almost 70% of hair mousses were volumizing, 33% were for curly hair, 20% of conditioners were smoothing, and 33% of the new shampoos were smoothing. Bamboo oil was a key ingredient, the word, “rescue,” appeared in five of the hair products assessed, three hair products used ingredients from the sea, and one in four hairsprays used the words, “touchable” or “soft” in their names.

Self's Healthy Beauty Award Winners

Body product stats revealed a natural bent, with 56% of the submissions claiming some sort of fruit, vegetable or edible ingredient, speaking to the desire for good for you healthy ingredients. Of the 150 products submitted for the body category, 43 were lotions, 31 body washes and 60 were moisturizers, in butter, cream, or lotion form.

In addition, despite bushels of strawberries, apples, mangoes, and oranges, pomegranate was the most popular fruit this year; green tea was used in three products, milk in six products, five products used “sugar” in their name, and one in three body washes tested was floral.

Face care statistics showed a strong 122 out of 352 products submitted as anti-aging (35%), with 16% serums, and 19% cleansers. Makeup stats supported specific trends, with 32% of winners in the category including the words bright, illuminate, glow and shimmer, and 60% of tinted moisturizers containing SPF, 40% of mascaras dedicated to volumizing, and 60% of blushes were powders.

In addition to the Healthy Beauty Award program, Self has initiated a social networking campaign on www.self.com, hosts a Facebook page, as well as Twitter interface and iPad app, for those interested in locating and purchasing all the winning products.